It was Dwight Eisenhower who famously stated, ‘Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field’. The same rings true for water reform, and once again, this week the list of systemic failures and a lack of basic understanding of how policy decisions impact communities was on display.

A NSW Government public hearing held in Deniliquin this week looked at the impacts of the Water Amendment (Restoring Our River) Act 2023 on NSW regional communities.

The speakers ranged in age, sex, background and occupation but the theme remained constant, the status quo isn’t working.

Trevor Clark President of the Yanco Creek and Tributaries Advisory Council painted a stark picture of the impacts of water reform and the changing goal posts.

“Buybacks have an enormous impact far and wide. I call them the good, the bad and the ugly,” stated Mr Clark.

Clark listed the great work that had been done over the formative policy reform years, as irrigators gifted water back for projects such as the Barmah Millewa Wetlands and the Living Murray Project, and also reflected on the sweeping buybacks and their impact under the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

“Water buybacks for the Murray Darling Basin Plan in 2014 which we saw our regionally region heavily impact and still recovering.”

Clark outlined the impacts he had seen on local communities.

“You look at the Finley High School, when water reform started, there was in excess of 900 students. Today, there are less than 300 and it’s declining every year.”

“So the demographic of our town, we’re losing the next generation. As I mentioned before, we’re losing the next generation of irrigators, because why would they want to invest into it, into a system at the moment where there’s constant rule changes.”

Clark conveyed his frustration at the constant rule changes.

“I remember the day Tony Burke brought out the policy and the 450 and it had quite strict rules around that policy. When that water was to be recovered, they have been removed, which has changed the whole scenario on the 450.”

“Now we’ve got the 450 up water, honestly, does it ever end?”

“Along with the rule changes, increasing rules based water, and planned environmental water is reducing consumptive uses, yield and reliability.”

“Unless you’re involved in water and water policy, a lot of irrigators wouldn’t understand, because these changes are quite small, but they add up.”

Casting an expert opinion Ronnie Sefton AM, founder of Sefton & Associates spoke of her time looking into the social and economic impacts of water reform.

“What we found was that there were 40 reports that had been done around the Murray Darling Basin,” stated Sefton.

“Certainly when we went out and consulted with local communities, communities were really in dire straits, and so they were feeling very, as Rob talked about, quite challenged. Many were depressed and some were suicidal. Some did commit suicide, not just over the drought, but the fact that government, and particularly leaders in government, were just not listening to what the situation was.”

Sefton took aim at the sweetener the Albanese Government were offering to offset their wrecking ball of buybacks.

“I find the $300 million is offensive. That is absolutely inadequate for what the Murray Darling Basin needs, particularly the southern system, such as this region. We’re general water security holders here with irrigation, and for New South Wales to get 160 odd million dollars to go across the Murray Darling Basin is absolutely inadequate.”

Despite a litany of failures, little appears to be sinking in, which risks our production system, our environment, and the nation’s food security.

“It is predicted by ABARES that this (water buybacks) will drive the water price in excess of $180 per megalitre. At that price, the rice industry in Australia is at risk of non-existence,” stated Sunrice CEO Paul Serra.

“We’re exceptionally proud of the fact that we are the highest yielding, lowest water usage per ton rice industry in the world, and one of the lowest carbon emission rice producers in the world.”

“Any loss of food production of rice from Australia, for example, would lead to us needing to import that rice from other grown regions in the world. That would come at a very significant net carbon increase for the planet.” stated Serra.

Sentiments that were echoed by Sunrice Chairman, Laurie Arthur

“What we produce is all value added and sent across the world, and what we’re facing now, we honestly believe we’re being forced offshore by the water reform process.”

Southern Riverina Irrigators Executive Officer Sophie Baldwin said with government buybacks, water prices will drive continued decline in production of staple foods.

“A lot of the staple foods that we eat every day, we used to produce in this region. 3.1 billion litres of milk. Now that’s down to about 1.8 billion litres of milk for every million dollars that the dairy industry creates; it creates six full-time jobs.”

“It’s also dangerous to just have a monoculture as well. For our food security, for our nation, we need to have all these different crops growing at different times of the year, because a lot of them are the staple foods that we eat on our table every day.”

If the plan is not working for the community, the food producers, then surely it is helping the environment? Not according to the witnesses.

“I’ve had this argument even with Simon Banks, the Commonwealth environmental Water Holder.”

“I said to Simon, you need to take some credit for your fish breeding, and he goes, \”Oh, wow.\” I said, when CEWH started, the biomass of carp in the river system was about 40 per cent, today it’s in excess of 90 per cent so here we are putting all this water down the river with the spring flush, we’re breeding European carp and European carp are destroying our rivers,” recalled Clark.

“People will tell you time and time again, you could see the bottom of it, 10 or 12 foot down. You’d see the bottom. You’d see the ribbon weed. You’d see all the aquatic plants along the bottom of it. Today it’s silt. All the holes are filling up because there’s such a biomass of European carp in the system now it is simply destroying our waterways.”

Rob Brown of the Deniliquin Chamber of Commerce also pointed to environmental destruction of the waterways.

“People in the upper Murray and on the Victorian and New South Wales side, will tell you that we’re disturbed about our river systems. We’re disturbed about the collapse of banks. We’re disturbed that they’re becoming channels and then the silting, and obviously there’s flood risk,” stated Brown.

Many of the witnesses also spoke of critical flaws underpinning the basin plans, ones that cement the doom of the unbalanced political plan, which rides roughshod over the Australian people. Water, energy, manufacturing or a pandemic, “trust” the government.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 24 July 2025.